Two hours and three sudden breaches of bodily integrity later, I was forced to conclude cultivation wasn’t that simple. There was something to learn there, but the pain of expelling each tiny deviation was simply too much for me to bear. Even though they healed in thirty minutes, each sudden ejection of qi filled blood was worse than getting stabbed. It was the way they ripped the flesh on th...
2023-12-10 20:17:22 +0000 UTC View PostThe Night Market was surprisingly convenient. On one hand, it was only open at night, which was a little bothersome when you didn’t sleep. But it was both primarily hosted and patronized by outer disciples, so it made sense. All of them needed to sleep, and since the outer sect was mostly nocturnal, the market was open when they were awake. I was sure there were better options for elders to g...
2023-12-04 03:00:31 +0000 UTC View PostSu Li woke in pain. In her sleep, she had rolled over. Her leg had fully extended as she turned, then been caught under her. Her knee felt on fire, like it was breaking all over again.
She tensed up, and stifled a cry. She didn’t flinch and risk the thin sheet pulling her broken fingers out of their safe positions. The last two days had beaten in the lesson that moving without thinking ...
2023-11-26 17:50:01 +0000 UTC View PostI don’t know why I decided to come home first. There was no reason for it. I didn’t have any goods to put away. I didn’t need to sleep, or change. I didn’t have time to put my feet up. But all the same, it just felt right, that my first stop back in the sect would be my home. Perhaps I hoped deep down that if I treated it like home, it might become one in truth.
Or maybe I was jus...
2023-11-26 17:49:29 +0000 UTC View PostTruth be told, I didn’t really expect mortal rice wine to be able to get me drunk. It was generally a constant in cultivation stories that you needed spiritual rice wine to get cultivators properly intoxicated. Mortal alcohol might work at lower realms, but definitely not by core formation. All the same, I was a little disappointed. Despite the odds, I’d held out hope.
It wasn’t tot...
2023-11-18 21:09:19 +0000 UTC View PostChen Yu paused before the doors to Princess Xifeng’s chambers, steeling himself for what was to come. Before him, the masked pair of imperial guards standing at either side of the great double doors said nothing. One of them had given him a single appraising glance as he approached, before dismissing him as not a threat. The imperial guard had always unnerved him. Chen Yu had served the Qin f...
2023-11-13 02:24:58 +0000 UTC View PostI'm not an expert on urban planning, but I don't think it's unfair of me to say that Xianyang was a giant mess. It started out positive, the outer wall of the city wasn’t colossal or anything, but it was the height of three men. Sure, a core formation cultivator could leap right over it, but nearly twenty feet of dull yellow stone was an imposing barrier for mortals. Three individual gates we...
2023-11-08 20:30:43 +0000 UTC View PostWang Li was a covetous man. He did not deny the truth of his soul. That way, lay demons of the heart. The blind masses denounced the man who would covet that which was above his station. Power, wealth, women, he wanted it all. They called such hunger base, envious, unfilial.
The blind masses were blind for a reason. They could not see it, but the kernel of their morality was born of the w...
2023-11-04 00:05:42 +0000 UTC View PostI ran through the night without stopping. My legs pumped like pistons, impossibly long strides eating up the ground beneath me. There was none of the exhilaration of running down the mountain, the road was flat, with few landmarks visible in the darkness. I’d never hated running, but I’d never loved it either. The wind in my hair, the effortless power of motion was nice, but after two hours...
2023-10-29 21:54:53 +0000 UTC View Post